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Shakespeare's Shrew: Orthodoxy and Carnival

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Shakespeare's Shrew: Orthodoxy and Carnival Shakespeare's Shrew: Orthodoxy and Carnival by Paulo Lufs de Freitas Drama Department Goldsmiths College Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Phflosophy in the University of London 2001 2 Abstract Although the Shakespearean comedies have been analysed as festive plays, and more recently even his historical plays and tragedies have been viewed in the light of Bakhtin's theory of Carnival and the carnivalesque, The Taming of the Shrew has been systematically ignored. It would appear that this situation is a result of the misogynist issues the play raises. In seeing The Taming of the Shrew as a carnivalized drama in addition to the other Shakespeareanplays already placed in this category, the aim of this thesis is to show that this early comedy is perhaps even more representative of what Bakhtin termed as carnivalized literature than any other play to be found in Shakespeare's canon. This, I would suggest, is related to the intertextual qualities of a text which has interwoven in its three-plot structure popular oral tradition, elements of the Italian commedia, and the domestic clowning conventions. All these three elements are saturated with a system of images appropriate to the culture of Carnival. As a result of this, the text goes deeply into the Carnival grotesque realism described by Bakhtin. Seeing the play form as dialogic in the same way as the Bakhti-nian polyphonic novel is, I argue here that The Taming of the Shrew is a dialogue of voices, in which the patriarchal one is dominant. However, the patriarchal voice is not the only one to be heard. The opposing voices threaten the patriarchal authority, even when they seem to agree with it. The play's carnivalesque open-endedness affied to its 'metatheatrical' qualities reveals the contradictions of the dominant ideology. With respect to the controversial issue of the relationship between Shakespeare's The Taming of The Shrew and The Taming of a Shrew, the anonymous text is analysed here as a parody of its sources rather than as a ýplagiarism' or a 'compilation' of Shakespeare's and Marlowe's works. The similarities and differences between these two texts are seen positively rather than dismissively. 3 Contents Acknowledgments Introduction I- Carnival and Carnivalized Drama 9 Festivity as Subversive Carnival 15 The Reversal of Order 32 The World of Carnival 33 The English Festival of Carnival and Easter 35 The Carnivalesque War 41 Carnival Against Order 46 Carnival's Ritualized Violence 54 11- The Shrew Plays: Connections, Orthodoxy and Contentions 58 The Shrew and A Shrew: Documentary Evidence 58 A Stolen Piece or Just a Parody of Its Sources? 71 The Lack of a Complete Sly Framework and How It Affects The Play as a Whole 82 Is Sly Still There? 86 III - Sly as a Clown 97 Christophero Sly: An Elizabethan Tramp 99 A Tarltonesque Figure 105 Sly: A Major Clownish Character Played by The Company's Major Clown III The Jig as an Afterpiece 112 Kemp's Clowning Conventions 119 4 The Clowns' Context 125 IV -A Carnivalized Battle Between The Sexes 129 A Carnivalized Drama 132 Boys Playing Women in the Carnivalesque Shrew 141 The Holiday Spirit 152 Grotesque Imagery: Carnivalesque Thrashing and Abuse 154 Shakespeare's 'Monstrous' Shrew 168 Buying and Selling Marriage as Goods on a Market Stall 174 The 'Battle Between Carnival and Lent' 178 The Shrew is Tamed: A Parody 188 Conclusion 202 Bibliography 204 5 Acknowledgments The task I have undertaken has involved many people and institutions to which I would like to express my gratitude. I should first like to thank the Brazilian agency for CNPq - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientffico e Tecnol6gico the four- year grant, without which this work would have been impossible; and the Universidade do Rio de Janeiro (Uni-Rio) for having given me the chance to commit myself to such a project by allowing the withdrawal from my duties for some considerable time. I am in great debt to Simon Shepherd for his advice, his reading of my first draft and his critical comments which have made me rethink my initial thoughts. I am grateful to him for his sympathy and immense help. I would also like to thank Jean York from the Goldsmiths Research Office for her support and for understanding the problems I faced. Special thanks should be given to my colleagues of the Departamento de Interpretagdo, in particular to Luciano Pires Maia and Jane Celeste Guberfain who have my immense gratitude. I should also like to thank Roberto de Cleto, the former Dean of the Centro de Letras e Artes da. Uni-Rio, who supported my project in the first instance. And I am grateful to Aussonia Bernardes for her support. I must thank Mauricio Abreu for his important role as I formulated my decision to work on this project and for his help throughout the whole process. Many thanks should be given to the staff of the University of London Library, Goldsmiths Library, Birkbeck Library, The British Library and of The Shakespeare Centre Library for their kindness in dealing with my requests. I am greatly in debt to Andrew Hellicar for the immense support he has given me, and especially for his help during this unexpected extra year. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to Jeffrey Marshall, Susie Hankins, Chris Meredith, Vivian Fox, Simon Warwick, Anterisa Frota Andrade, Heitor Caldas and Jos6 Marmo da Silva, and to all my friends, here in England and in Brazil, for their enduring support, and especially to Nefly Laport for her generosity and company when in London; to my sister Lidia de Freitas for her prompt assistance concerning my affairs in Rio, and to all my family, especially my parents Carmelita and Walter for their care and affection from the other side of the Atlantic. 6 Introduction The Taming of the Shrew has become one of the most problematic plays in Shakespeare's canon. And the reason for this seems to be the misogynist issues it raises. Despite being one of the most popular of Shakespeare's comedies, the play has been an embarrassment for critics, directors, and the actors performing in it. As a 'problematic' play, this particular text, which has no lack of festive motifs, has also been ignored by critics analysing Shakespeare's plays in terms of festivity and, more recently, in terms of Bakhtin's theory of Carnival. In seeing the play as carnivalesque, as well as other Shakespearean plays already placed in this category, my project here is to offer an alternative reading of The Taming of the Shrew as carnivalized drama. However, in order to apply Bakhtin's theory of carnivalized literature to the Shakespearean drama some points have to be clarified, especially in relation to his proposition that drama is by its nature 'monologic'. For if Carnival is, according to him, a 'dialogic' system, how then we can apply his theory to drama? Since I believe that drama is a dialogic form, just like the Bakhtinian polyphonic novel, I shall begin this thesis by examining Bakhtin's view and contextualizing it with existing critical material on the subject. Then, after establishing the grounds on which drama can be viewed as a polyphonic system, I discuss Bakhtin's idea of a 'progressive' Carnival as against the idea of Carnival as a 'safety valve'. The manifestations of Carnival, which can be subversive as well as progressive, are described and supported by historical testimony of this anarchic festivity of the early modem period. Thus, I will make an account of London's Shrovetide as a peculiar Renaissance example of Carnival's freedom and ritualized violence. Since I am viewing the Shakespearean Shrew as a carnivalesque battle between the sexes, I suggest that the 'violence' pictured in the play is an intertextual reassessment of Carnival's ritualized violence. These are the subjects of my first chapter. In the second chapter I analysethe controversial issue of the relationship between Shakespeare'sThe Taming of The Shrewand the anonymousThe Taming of a Shrew. Instead of viewing the anonymoustext as simply a 'plagiarism' or a 'compilation' of Shakespeare'sand Marlowe's works, I suggest in this chapter that the former is a 7 parody of its sources. Support for this suggestion comes from a basic characteristic of parody: parodists do not conceal their sources; on the contrary, they openly acknowledge them. And this appears to be true in the case of the anonymous text. Thus, in this chapter I discuss this subject in the context of a modem theory of parody. According to this theory, parody does not have the negative meaning generally applied to it. Firstly, parodists can laugh with as well as laugh at the parodied texts; secondly, one of the parodists' aims is also to enlarge and give a new meaning to the parodied text. In the particular instance of The Taming of the Shrew, the anonymous text is perhaps the first representative of a series of secondary versions of the Shakespearean text of which Cole Porter's musical Kiss me, Kate (1948) screened by George Sidney (1953) and Zeffirelli's film (1966) are two widely-known modem examples. Whether these versions, as well as The Taming of a Shrew, are 'good' or 'bad' is a matter of critical debate; however as 'parodies' of their source they offer new ways of seeing the 'original' text. In this respect the 1594 anonymous text, by 'enlarging' the Sly framework, gives us more material with which to examine the 'meaning' of the 'original'. This is why in my analysis of the Shakespearean Shrew, rather than being dismissive of the anonymous text, I have treated it as an independent work providing invaluable material to help us gain an understanding of the 'original' staging of the play.
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